Scheer is a graduate of the University of Iowa who earned her MFA in creative writing at the University of Michigan. She answered a few of our questions:

Jacket Copy: Did you develop your workshop project for cancer patients and caregivers specifically for the Dzanc Prize?

Scheer: In the summer of 2007, I had the opportunity to serve as a
graduate intern in Complementary Therapies at the Comprehensive
Cancer Center.
I assisted in developing and
implementing a creative writing program for patients, which included facilitating
studio time and starting an oral narrative project. I'm thrilled to be able to
continue my work there and start teaching workshops for patients and caregivers.

JC: What was your inspiration?

Scheer: I've always been fascinated by the complexity of the human
body. As an undergraduate at Iowa,
I studied cognitive neuroscience and planned to go to the medical school. I worked for several years in a neurology
lab, but found myself much more interested in people's stories than their
pathologies. And the narrative is ongoing — with an illness like cancer, the
story never really ends, so I'd like to help people shape that narrative.

JC: Have you developed a complete syllabus yet?

Scheer: To be perfectly honest, I don't have a syllabus, but I'm
considering using poetry and prose from Rafael Campo, Raymond Carver, Lucy
Grealy, Lorrie Moore, and Andre Dubus. When working with patients and
caregivers, due to the nature of illness, I've found the schedule must be more
fluid than that of a traditional workshop.

JC: Will you include any narratives of illness or caregiving, or will the workshop, instead, look much like any other creative writing workshop, just in a different setting?

Scheer: While I'm planning to
incorporate published work that deals with cancer (excerpts from Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face" and Lorrie
Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here") these illness narratives
won't be the sole focus of the workshops. I'd like to strike a balance between giving
people the tools for self-expression, as in a more traditional workshop, and tackling
the unique complexities of illness narratives.